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U.S. releases female Iraqi prisoners

BAGHDAD — The American military confirmed Thursday that it had released five Iraqi women from custody, nine days after kidnappers said they would kill an American journalist if the United States did not free all the Iraqi women in its jails.

The women were released late Thursday afternoon in Baghdad, military officials said. They said the release was unrelated to the kidnappers' demands, that the review of the women's cases had come up before the demands were made on Arabic television Jan. 17.

That day a group calling itself the Vengeance Brigade said it would kill the journalist, Jill Carroll, within 72 hours if the Americans did not release all female Iraqi prisoners.

Four Iraqi women remained in American custody and Carroll's fate had not become any clearer. Nothing has been heard from the kidnappers since the broadcast, when she was shown in a silent video.

"We do not negotiate or bend to demands of terrorists," said Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, a military spokesman.

Carroll, a 28-year-old freelance journalist, had been on assignment for The Christian Science Monitor on Jan. 7 when gunmen seized her on her way to an interview in northwest Baghdad. Her translator was shot and killed while he tried to make a phone call.

Scattered violence across Iraq on Thursday left at least eight Iraqis dead.

A bomb planted on a road north of Baghdad exploded near a convoy carrying the minister of industry and minerals, Osama Abdul Aziz al-Najafi.

He was not wounded, but the blast killed three guards and seriously wounded a fourth. It was the sixth attempt on his life, a ministry spokeswoman said.

In Baghdad, police officers and insurgents fought a gun battle in the Adel neighborhood, where Carroll was kidnapped, leaving one police officer dead and six wounded, an Interior Ministry official said. Two Iraqis were shot and killed and a third was wounded when gunmen opened fire on their car in the Saidiya district in southern Baghdad, the official said.

In the northern city of Kirkuk, insurgents killed two city officials in drive-by shootings.

Jumaa Haji Rasheed, deputy director of the city's trade department, was gunned down as he dropped his daughters off at school, said Farhad Talabani, a caption in the Kirkuk police department.

Uthman Mohamed Mahmood, a member of the city's anti-corruption commission, was shot and killed while driving in the Askari neighborhood.

Three American soldiers were killed in combat on Tuesday and Wednesday, the American military said.

One died in a bomb blast in Baghdad; one in a rocket attack near the western city of Ramadi; and a third in Karmah, just outside Falluja and west of Baghdad.

The U.S. military also announced that it had transferred authority in the provinces of Diwaniya and Wasit in southern Iraq to the Iraqi Army. Soldiers and commanders from the 8th Iraqi Army Division took control of the two provinces Thursday.